Within the radio spectrum there are several radio frequency bands. Some bands, known as unlicensed bands or unlicensed spectrum, are unrestricted and available for wireless communications service providers to use. Alternatively, licensed links bands are allocated selectively and require regulatory (e.g., Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval before service providers are able to utilize these bands. Continually increasing mobile data traffic from users is leading to growing demands on network capacity. This situation is made even more difficult because different applications have different bandwidth/network requirements. For example, an application for document processing is much less bandwidth-intensive than a streaming video application.
Additional network capacity can be obtained by increasing spectral efficiency or by acquiring additional wireless spectrum. Spectral efficiency in 4G systems for single input single output communication (SISO) has reached theoretical limits of communication. Using multiple antennas at base stations (access points) and/or at the mobile devices can provide some spectral gain. While transmission diversity is currently used at some base stations, receiver diversity can be difficult due to constraints on the form factor of mobile devices. Further, regulatory concerns and limited availability of licensed bands have resulted acquiring additional wireless spectrum a particularly challenging task. Because it is difficult to acquire additional wireless spectrum, licensed band technologies (such as LTE, 5G, etc.) are increasingly relying upon unlicensed bands for additional spectrum. Further, a large number of independent service providers utilizing a variety of underlying wireless technologies (e.g., 3G, Wifi, LTE, 5G etc.) makes this even more challenging. Thus, there exists a need for a new system perspective that can help in determining how wireless spectrum accesses can be shared among users, applications, and service providers.